The workshop deck from #LeanDayWest, September 16, 2013 in Portland, OR.

1. get research out of the silo
and into the team

2. what’s the matter with research?
It’s expensive.
It’s slow.
We don’t learn anything.
It’s too late.
The sample size is too small.
People lie/dominant respondents/groupthink

3. how could research be better?
When is it really needed?
What approaches are the most useful?
What tools work best?
What resources are needed?
Who should do it?
How much time should it take?
What should it cost?

4. anyone for a little
role playing?
The roles:
research lead
product owner
marketing & sales lead
product designer

5. everybody gets involved
But you should keep in mind your role’s POV.
What does someone in your role need to learn?
Jot it
down!

6. Start with hypotheses
User stories:
Who do you think are your customers?
What are their problems?
What job do they need to do?
How do they solve this problem now?
What tools do they use?
Who do they turn to for help?
Product hypothesis:
How could a product improve their success?
How could a product reduce their pain?
Jot it
down!

7. are you right?
you’ll need people to find out
You could send out a Google Form or a SurveyMonkey...
But you don’t have time for that today.
You need to interview at least 5 people today - during this
session.
But not your fellow attendees. You’re going to get out on the
streets, or onto Skype, and talk to some people.
You’ll have an hour - to find them, and talk to them.

8. now:
find some people to talk to
Who?
What are they
trying to do? What
gets in their way?
What costs them
time or money?
How do they
currently solve the
problem? What
defines success?
How eager are they
for a solution?
Where?
Depends on your
product, but really
anywhere -
Starbucks, the mall,
on the street, in a
park, on a college
campus.
How?
Together - don’t
divide up the team
too much. If you’re
not asking
questions, you’re
observing, making
notes, taking
pictures, recording,
etc.

9. what do you need to learn?
An interview guide will help you stay focused - but it’s not a script.
To start, you only need 8-10 questions.
It serves two purposes:
Start by validating your assumptions about who the customer
is and how they behave.
Then seek additional information that helps you make
decisions about the product.
After 3 people, prioritize your top 3 issues or questions.
After 5 people, start asking new questions.

10. Be nice and listen.

11. what are you going to do with this
information?
Make decisions - as a team!
Are these really your customers?
Is their problem really painful, or their desire really
strong? Does it even exist?
Are they really making decisions the way you
thought?
What do you need to change?
What else do you need to learn?

12. THE ANSWERS TO THESE
QUESTIONS IS YOUR ‘REPORT’
But you’ll have to determine what the best way to
share the information across your team is.

13. Use the tools
closest to hand

14. Skype + Dropbox
Skype-based interviews allow you to
get face to face or voice to voice
without spending time & money to be
there in person. You can also have
shorter, more frequent calls; share a
desktop to show stimulus; send files
for them to view and vice versa; or,
using Skype on a mobile device, get
your participant to take you on a tour
of their home or office.
With 3rd party software, you can
record the calls (audio and/or video)
and save the calls directly to a
Dropbox or other shared folder.

15. iphone + dropbox
There are terrific (and
cheap!) accessories
that transform your
iPhone or Android into
pretty good video
cameras - you can then
upload your videos
and photos directly
from your phone to a
Dropbox folder the
team shares.

16. evernote
Using Evernote, you can enter
your interview guide in a
notebook and then hit the mic
icon to record answers after
each question, or post photos
of anything relevant to the
interview, within the note itself.
Notebooks are shareable
amongst a team and
searchable, making it easier to
find specific themes or
quotations.

17. produced assets -
good enough is good enough.
Edited video and
audio
Transcripts of
interviews
Produced decks with
designs based on
user feedback
Playlists of rough
snippets in Dropbox
Shared notes on
Google Docs
Photographed/
scanned user
sketches

18. nothing beats a conversation.
To make research
meaningful to the whole
team, the whole team needs:
Stakes
Access
Involvement
Accountability
Useful results

19. A few words of caution
The process of transforming listening &
watching into insight is what research is all
about.
But the process of transforming insight into
action is what design is all about.

20. forget the horse’s mouth
Don’t count on users to make your
decisions for you - that’s not their job.
Don’t let the report be the end of your
learning process - it’s just a way to
memorialize what you’ve learned and provide
a reference when you encounter similar
issues again.

21. Lean research is
about continuous
customer, partner & team feedback.

22. ok. let’s do this.

23. The Schedule
1:30pm-2pm: Identify your user personas (this will be your
recruitment criteria).
2pm-2:30pm: Hypothesize a solution - some features, benefits
and pain relievers.
2:30-2:45pm: Write an interview guide.
2:45-3:45pm: #GOTB, talk to some people
3:45-4pm: Discuss and summarize what you’ve learned (1 thing
you would change about your customer hypothesis and 1 thing
you would change about your solution hypothesis)
4-4:30pm: Teams present

24. product:
biz dev for small business
The Problem:
Small businesses and early stage startups don’t usually have huge
customer and prospect databases, but do need help managing and
tracking their customers and deal flow.
Most existing software is either too big and complicated for a small
business owner or early stage startup to set up and use effectively.
Those apps aimed at smaller businesses and startups focus typically
focus on only one aspect of new biz - creating and tracking emails,
creating group to-do lists, merging email contacts from mail & social
platforms... But a lot of entrepreneurs just end up with a spreadsheet.
How could we create a simple solution for these entrepreneurs?

25. product 2:
vacation planning
The Problem:
People don’t get enough vacation time - so they want to
make it count. Today, travel sites assume you know where
you want to go, when, for how long, what you want to do
when you get there, and how much you want to spend.
Which means people spend hours trying to figure out all
of that before they can actually book their trip.
How could a simple solution help these vacation
planners?

26. USERPERSONAS(a.k.a.RecruitmentCriteria)

27. Products &
Features
Customer
Jobs
Benefits
Pains
Benefit
Creators
Pain
Relievers
http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/downloads/value_proposition_canvas.pdf
Product-market-benefit hypothesis